Contemplating Class

As you’re all aware the new spin off show Class will be materialising on BBC Three and become a new member of the Doctor Who Universe. The new spin off will be following in the footsteps of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures that have left a massive mark that seems impossible to exceed. But will Class do itself justice?

It wasn’t long ago since the Doctor Who Twitter page announced a huge announcement to be arriving shortly. Undoubtedly as Doctor Who fans, we conjured up the most exciting possibilities of what this ambiguous revelation could be: a new companion? A returning character? A new trailer? With great enthusiasm, the BBC announced the new show Class which will start filming in Spring and written by YA writer Patrick Ness based in Coal Hill School. The fandoms reaction wasn’t so thrilled with the idea…

Within a seconds of tweeting, floods of tweets emerged that suggested that Class would be a disappointment without even seeing the first episode. From my first reaction, I was slightly disappointed by this announcement yet eager to learn more of how the show would expand in new places.

As many fans will know, Coal Hill School is iconic to the show as it appeared in the first ever episode back in 1963. It has also appeared in numerous others such as Remembrance of the Daleks and The Caretaker. Many would say this was a strange choice for a spin-off show. Torchwood fans would have preferred a return for the beloved show or a Clara/Ashildr spin-off (thank god that wasn’t the announcement).

The show will have four protagonists played by Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah. Katherine Kelly will also join the cast. From the synopsis:

“All the time travelling over the years has caused the very walls of space and time to become thin. There’s something pressing in on the other side, something waiting for its chance to kill everyone and everything, to bring us all into Shadow.”

Fortunately, with its target audience being young adult aimed, Class has the opportunity to explore darker themes that Doctor Who may be restricted to show. Hopefully we will be able to explore more topics like Torchwood was able to broadcast which is less suitable to the child audience. In my opinion, I love when Doctor Who goes over these kind of themes which seem too brief and only touches the surface of its potential. With Class, many more of these themes can be explored and has the what it takes to produce excellent stories aimed more to the older audience.

So why has the fandom reacted this way? Unlike Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, we already knew and loved these characters and could look forward to the stories they had in store. However with Class we know nothing about these characters or how Coal Hill will have any significance to this series. The fandom has simply been left in the dark with this new series; yet the more we learn about it, the more we are excited for its arrival.

In the meantime, the fandom is surviving one of the most tedious time to be a Doctor Who fan: The Hiatus. With Doctor Who to return months away in Spring 2017; the only so thing of Doctor Who we will have this year is a Christmas Special, Big Finish audio’s, and of course Class. Let’s face it, this is the closest thing we will have to having a series of Doctor Who this year and still it is hard to appreciate.

Imagine for a moment that Class will actually be a good series. Remember the time Doctor Who was at its best and had three spin-offs broadcasting at the same time? Introducing a new series can introduce many other people to Doctor Who and perhaps bring back Doctor Who to its original popularity.

To sum up, Class can either be a brilliant series that will expand the Doctor Who Universe; giving us more Doctor Who every year. Or vice versa, it can be something we will never consider as canon. Personally (besides my previous opinion) I am now looking forward to Class and hope it will be a series that will live up to the spin off shows from before. Now all we need is Ian Chesterton to appear…

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2 thoughts on “Contemplating Class”

I myself was glad to hear news of a spinoff, and I was surprised how much hate most of the fandom is giving it, even though barely anything about it has been revealed. I agree that it would have been nice to have more Torchwood, but we have Big Finish for that now, and Miracle Day wasn’t really great, in my opinion (as well as many others), so I wouldn’t want it to continue and end up getting whatever the TV version of Sequelitis would be. It’s nice to get something fresh every once in a while, which is one of the reasons for cast and crew changes in Doctor Who, but with spinoffs, it can be harder to do that and keep everyone happy.

Also, this was a great article to be your first one as an official Gallifrey Archive member (I know you have written for here before, but that was as a guest writer), and I hope to see more.

Thanks 😀 And I agree I didn’t like Miracle Day much either and I think Torchwood belongs to Big Finish now. its also good were getting something new and fresh to Doctor Who instead of recycling ideas 🙂